


The Hunter's Glory

by RefugeeofTumblr



Series: flight was never so beautiful / and the sky was never so clear [1]
Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Car Accidents, Death, F/M, mutant!Harrison, wing!fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-24
Updated: 2016-06-24
Packaged: 2018-07-16 22:25:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,498
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7287163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RefugeeofTumblr/pseuds/RefugeeofTumblr
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eobard Thawne attacks Tess and Harrison. It doesn't quite go as he plans.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Hunter's Glory

A dark minivan races around a bend in the rural highway, headlights blazing. It moves just a little too fast - the driver doesn’t see that a trap has been set on the asphalt ahead.

 _Bang!_ The rows of sharp steel spikes that had been laid - cunningly disguised among a thin layer of leaves - across the road blow out the minivan’s tires. Pressurized air explodes from holes in the rubber, lifting the car up several inches, and, fatally, tilting it just a fraction to the left. Gravity takes over. The minivan comes down hard on the front left tire, flipping violently as momentum pushes it along for another twenty yards.

Harrison Wells’s world tilts on its axis, both literally and figuratively. Only the fact that his wheelchair is secured to the floor of the van - and, in turn, is secured to him with padded chest straps - saves him.

To his dismay, any relief is short lived. The sound of choking startles him out of his stunned reverie.

“Tess? No, no, hang on!”

The very straps that save Harrison’s life condemn the life of his wife. Tess turns blue, then purple, as he struggles to free himself from the harness.

“No,” he pleads, tears in his eyes. “No, please, let me just…”

When the buckles finally give way beneath his fingers, Tess’s lifeless body collapses to the ground below. Harrison is sobbing openly now, a constant stream of ‘oh God’ and ‘I’m sorry’ and ‘this is all my fault’.

That’s when he hears footsteps approaching the car. A mixture of ice-cold fear and deep dread floods down Harrison’s spine as he remembers that without his chair he can’t hide his deformity.

An unpleasant voice purrs in his ear. “Well, this is unexpected, I must say.”

Harrison yelps as he’s dragged from the car by alarmingly strong hands. Broken glass digs into what little exposed skin he has; he winces at the pain of a thousand tiny cuts as this strange man drops him unceremoniously on the cold asphalt. There’s no chance to hide who - what - he is now.

Harrison’s body is almost completely that of a bird. His upper body is that of a man, apart from the powerful wings that extend from his shoulders (attached just behind his arms) and the fact that he has no nails - just sharp black claws. From his midriff down is birdlike too; Harrison’s legs are long, covered in black scales, and end in talons. Each talon is at least five inches long, but the middle two are longer - seven and a half inches, perhaps slightly longer.

He cowers as his attacker looms over him.

“My, my, Doctor Wells,” the man purrs. Harrison stares at him, eyes wide, startled by the title.

“How do you know me? Who are you? Why -“

“Tsk tsk.” The other man smirks; an ugly, self-satisfied expression that ends any hope Harrison has of reasoning with him. “My name is Eobard Thawne, but that name doesn’t matter, not anymore.” Thawne traces the line of Harrison’s neck with one finger, tracing the muscles as a farmer might to examine a fresh-bought cow. “It won’t matter for many years. The only thing that matters is who you are: Harrison Wells.”

Bile floods Harrison’s mouth. He tries to strike out at his attacker, tries to scramble away, but Thawne grabs his wrists. “What are you talking about? I… I don’t understand!”

“In the year 2020, you and your,” Thawne pauses, jerks his head dismissively at the car, “wife, Tess Morgan, successfully launch a particle accelerator that changes the course of history. I need it to happen a bit sooner than that, if I’m going to get back.”

That’s fucking insane, Harrison wants to say. But why this man thinks he’s from the future (because how else would he even convince himself that he ‘knows’ about STAR labs) is a question that can wait. The only priority right now is to make him leave. So Harrison struggles violently, clawing at Eobard’s arms, shoulders, face, anything he can reach and then some.

Then he sees a strange device in the other man’s hand, and the hair (and down feathers) at the back of his neck stand on end.

“What is that?”

A nasty grin spreads across Thawne’s smug face. “My way home.”

Harrison’s attacker attempts to plunge a sharp, probe-like attachment at the end of a thin cable into Harrison’s chest. Even in the dim light the tiny blade glimmers; he can sense the deadliness of that keen edge as clearly as he can sense the deadliness of his own talons.

But Thawne makes a mistake. As he moves to stab Harrison he lets his grip on the other man’s wrists loosen by a fraction. A fraction, no more, no less. Yet the adrenaline that surges through Harrison’s veins jolts him into action, and he calls upon all his strength to twist out of his attacker’s grasp.

Too late, Thawne realizes his error, biting out an indistinct curse. A violent wrestling match begins as the two flail wildly - Harrison striking out with blind rage and fear, Thawne snarling, face twisted into a vicious mask of hatred as he fights to end the life of his _prey_.

Harrison can find no purchase, no leverage, in the cracked asphalt beneath his feet.

Instinct compels him to find it elsewhere.

Only when the spark of life drains suddenly from his attacker’s eyes does Harrison realize what he’s done. In that instant he becomes aware of the warm, sticky blood covering his talons, and he looks down to see Thawne’s belly torn open.

He vomits up the contents of his stomach at the side of the road, bile burning sensitive throat tissue as he continues to gag - even after he’s only ridding his stomach of the leftover acid from digesting his last meal. Blood and death mingle with the smell of the vomit, and even the faintly salty breeze can’t sweep the stench away.

_I just killed someone. He wanted to kill me. He knew who I am, and what I planed with Tess._

Harrison remains crouched there on the pavement for several long minutes, gazing horrified at the dead bodies - each life lost is and can only ever be a testament to the kind of monster he is. How can Thawne’s wounds possibly be explained away? Tess’s situation is clear enough, and though he blames himself for being distracted no concrete proof exists to say otherwise. But Thawne’s demise, self-defense though it was, is far too suspicious. No mere knife is capable of slicing so deeply - so cleanly - through flesh and bone as Harrison’s talons are.

Yet any investigation at all could expose Harrison for who (what) he truly is. Both front tires blown out at once? Skid marks from the spikes set into the road and the crash of his car? All pieces of evidence that could raise eyebrows, could cause potentially disastrous interest in the whereabouts and private life of Harrison Wells.

So in a daze, the mutant stands.

Eobard Thawne and Tess Morgan are buried, safe and secret, among the trees. The totaled minivan is harder to conceal. Harrison ends up simply pushing it a few meters away from the road. There the crumpled, broken car stays, camouflaged by layers of bushes and trees.

As long as nobody looks too closely the secret should stay buried. At this point, Harrison decides, shaking with exhaustion and horror, that’s the best he can hope for.

~

Flying home is a risk. Any number of people could see him on the way.

Unavoidable. There are of course inherent dangers when flying so low, so close to people’s homes, but it’s nighttime, and he can’t very well walk. So fly he does; stiffly and without much grace, but his wings are still quiet and swift despite the fact that he hasn’t flown regularly for years.

Harrison draws the curtains, makes sure doors and windows are locked securely. Once he’s assured himself that he’s safe here - for the time being, at least - he takes refuge on the couch with a bottle of bourbon.

The smooth burn of alcohol sliding down his throat is a relief to the mutant’s frazzled nerves.

By daybreak the broken shards are scattered across the floor.

Not a drop of the bottle’s contents remains. Neither do any of the pictures on Harrison’s nightstand; they lay in the trash, lost memories of trips he and Tess will never take again.

~

Years later Central City’s Mayor returns to his office after a coffee break. As he reads the grant proposal on the top of the stack, his eyes get progressively wider.

“Janice?”

~

It’s only fitting, perhaps, that such an unusual proposal is championed by an equally unusual man.

Harrison Wells smiles politely. The black metal of his wheelchair gleams in the light that pours in through the floor-to-ceiling windows which dominate an entire wall of the Mayor’s office.

“Hello, Mayor Bellows. I take it you saw something you liked?”

**Author's Note:**

> So I wanted to write a wing!fic series, and for some reason [this video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZG18Jzf1kWs) made me think of Barry and Harrison. Yes, there will be proper Barrison (as opposed to EoBarry) as the series progresses.
> 
> Kudos to elrhiarhodan. Without your enthusiasm - and your mad beta skills - this would have remained unwritten.


End file.
